Day Fin : pulling it up into a huey

There was a lot of driving at the end of this tour, so it's hard to recap everything that happened without the photos. luckily, we got plenty!


Before we left Texas, Tim insisted on tackling the zipline one last time. Luckily, he agreed to do it while the sun was up so we could at least have the pleasure of SEEING him crack his skull against a tree. For better or worse, though, his trip went off without a hitch and was relarively boring for those of us watching. After that, we hung around with Doug and his family for a minute thanking them for the unbelievable hospitality before we headed out for Tulsa.


The only reason we were really able to head back Tulsa way was because of the generosity and kindness of our friends in Native Lights. Here they are being a really good band. I think it's pretty safe to say that, of all the towns we ended up in for the first time, Tulsa was the biggest surprise of this whole tour. Everyone we met there was energized and excited to meet people and do things and tell stories. The whole town was alive and you could feel that. We'll be heading back as soon as we can.


This is Vanessa who, along with her roomate Erin, hosted us both nights we spent in Tulsa. They were immediately kind to us and made us feel at home. They were as interested in where we were coming from as we were them and it's great to have them as friends. Vanessa also cooked up some killer spaghetti for us before the show and it was incredible.


THEN, the next day she and Brittany took us to the Blue Jackolope - a kind of church/grocery store/BBQ joint that was just about the coolest place ever. Once again, everyone there was remarkably friendly and wanted us to try their food and experience their lives. I can't tell you how cool this place was. Also, from what i understand, the coffee here is really, really good.


We also happened to run into Vanessa's friends Cary and Robbie from the band 2+2 on the Moon. They were funny guys and let us eat with them and tell jokes. I really liked these guys.


Here I am trying the "BBQ Bologna". The cook behind the counter asked us if we'd ever had it (No) so he threw some on the rib plates for us. I guess it's kind of an Oklahoma thing, and it was super tasty. Really thick and smokey with a touch of sourness. I ate two and a half slices of it...




We left the Blue Jackolope and headed for Greenville. I guess all that BBQ put Zac to sleep, so here he is snoozing.


Here's Scarlet Tanager who we played with in Greenville. As always, it was fun to see the Eagle Scout dudes at this show and get to hang out a little bit before we headed home. Unfortunately, we didn't get to hang as much as we wanted, which got them to accuse us of being "like Rodeo Ruby Love", which couldn't be further from the truth.


That's it for now. We'll see you in December...this time we're headed out East! Blue Flying Angels, signing off.

Day ? : someone gets his eye poked out

Ok, so, it's been a minute since we've had a blog update...here's why.
After the Ft Worth show we had a day off in Denton, TX. starting then, and up until right now the whole next couple of days were a blur of extreme peaks and valleys, highs and lows, a roller coaster of fun and fear that finally appears to be drawing to a close. I'm gonna go ahead and jump in here....


Here's tim on stage in Ft Worth before soundcheck. Cowboys hate Tim, but that's because they secretly love him. It's the age old tale...

  


After the show we drove to Denton and met up with Doug Burr at his folks' place. This would be our homebase for the next three nights. It was totally comfortable and Doug's parents were very nice to us. For you super fans out there, this space we're in is also where Doug does his rehearsing. 








After we woke up around noon or so we set out on our mission for the day. The goals were, find a Chinese buffet and eat there, go to a post office, go to a bank, go to a music shop, and check out Denton. Here we are demolishing goal #1. We stayed long enough for each of us to visit the facilities and clear out a little room so we could attack the buffet one more time before we left.




After we ate we went to the Denton junk shop and Zac played with this battle axe while bryant got his american brain sucked out by the turbanator.


Then, we hung out reading in this coffee shop literally for hours before the action started. It was very relaxing.










Once our friends realized we were in Denton it didn't take long for word to reach us about Greg Dixon. Greg is the brother of our good buddy Mike, who Zac and I each play in bands with back home. Greg is also a very cool dude. One of these guys that you meet and instantly feel like you've known him forever. We grabbed dinner with Greg and he got to know all of us a little bit before we headed back to his place to chill out and listen to records and tell jokes. Another thing about GD is that he, like his brother, is a real world genius. Alot of our time in his living room was spent with us grinning and giggling while he happily unloaded knowlege of Zeuhl, Brian Eno, and Captain Beefheart on us all while we fired endless questions at him. It was a great night, and it's super cool now to count Greg as a friend. 

 
The next morning, this is what we woke up to. It seems normal enough, but this was no ordinary sleep. Zac was actually entranced in a magical coma that could only be undone with a kiss on the lips. Tim tried, but it didn't work. So, I knealt down beside him and gently pressed my pursed lips against his, to no avail. Finally, Bryant took a crack at it and after a long slow smooch Zac finally woke up. We were worried for a minute, but everything was pretty much back to normal after that.




Once we got cleaned up for the day we went outside and tim grabbed Doug's unicycle to take a crack at it. Turns out, they are hard to ride! Bryant was sorta starting to get the hang of it but we had to go to the show before he really had it mastered.


Greg came out to the show, and his wife Rachel came with him. She was equally as friendly and enthusiastic as Greg, and also a Hoosier. Im glad we got to meet her. Greg recorded the show, too! If we did any good, maybe we'll post it here sometime so you can hear it.


After the show we hung out just shooting the breeze with Doug for a while before we headed back to his parents' place. That's where things were going to get interesting. Unfortunately, this was the only picture I got of Doug. What's happening here is that he is wearing a headlamp and climbing into a tree that has a zipline attached to it. It's about 2am. He took a trip down the line and gave us some advice and a little warning about the end. Bryant was feeling brave, so he climbed up the ladder, settled in and launched himself off the platform. Doug's headlamp only reached so far, so just before Bryant faded off into the darkness, we noticed that he started to spin around and get a little off-kilter. That's bad. Once he went sliding into the darkness we lost sight of him, then heard a crash, a smack that sounded like Frank Thomas smashing an out-of-the-park homer, and a thud. No laughing, no expletives, no grunting...just silence. We ran up to find him and just saw him laying on the ground like a pile of laundry. We picked him up and he couldn't stand or walk at first, he just stumbled around. He was also speaking in tongues and chattering away in complete jibberish. Eventually he started to come to, but was kind of forgetting stuff and not making sense. Over the next half hour or so he got a little better, but was still forgetting things and asking weird questions. We decided to take him to the emergency room. We were in the ER until about 415am, and found out that he was concussed, but that he was going to be ok. By the time we left the hospital he was more or less in his right mind and we were all feeling a lot better. We did have to wake him up every two hours and check him out. Ultimately though, there was really only one way to fix him...

Day 5 : thou shalt not

We woke up early and hit the road for Austin as quick as we could. We had a long drive ahead of us and some good old friends to look forward to. Our evening meal was actually supplied to us by Stubbs BBQ, where we were playing, so we basically hung around there for a few hours before the show started. Although, once all of our buddies arrived we did make a quick trip to End of an Ear to browse through the record selection. It was a great night all around and we spent most of it chatting and relaxing with a quick show to play in between. 


We got to Stubb's early to eat and load in. Zac has never gotten to anyplace early in his entire life, so it caught him off guard a little bit. Here he is, frozen in thought, trying to come to grips with the concept. Unfortunately, it took him so long to make sense of what was happening and snap out of it that he was actually late for dinner. Luckily, that set him straight and everything was back to normal.

 
These are my Friends.
Bryant = Joey
Ryan = Chinandler Bong
Adam = Ross
Stephanie = Rachel
Tim = Monica
Zac = Phubu
I guess that makes me Gunther.


I woke up this morning to this beautiful scene. Naked Bryno just strumming away and crooning out some Donovan tunes peacefully in my direction. About ten seconds after I snapped this photo though, Ryan blasted Bryant square in the face with his pillow and screamed at him to shut-up. Naturally, this sent Bryant into a whirl and he started bawling and we couldn't really get him to stop for an hour or so. Eventually he cried himself back to sleep and everything was cool...for now


After Bryant and Ryan's little tiff we were all pretty upset, so, we decided to take a trip to the Harry Ransom museum and make them read passages together from this old bible we found until they could forgive each other and make nice. At first it was taking forever, but when they realized it was a pressing matter things started to move much more quickly.


Before you fall asleep looking at this, let me just tell you that this is the very first picture I ever took of the very first picture that was ever taken. 


I guess the effects of the bible study didn't last long because after Ryan left I went back into Adam's house to relieve myself and when I returned I found this grisly scene. From what I understand, Tim must have smarted off to Bryant or something, triggering his aggro stored up from earlier, and Bryant kicked him in the stomach and killed him. He threatened to break my phone right after I took this, but I begged him not to, asking how else he thought we should replace Tim if my iPod was laying in a parking lot shattered into a million pieces. He agreed and we jumped into the van and split for Dallas before Walker could show up and arrest us for murder.

Day 4 : bullocks, Pevley!

It didn't really matter where we were headed next, Tulsa was going to be a hard act to follow. It so happened that the next town were were landing in was Little Rock, Arkansas. We played at Sticky Fingerz. It was a really fancy place, and everyone there was way nice. The dudes from Free Micah met us at the door and took real good care of us. Maestro was the sound guy, and he was crazy. At one point during the soundcheck he said into the monitors, "how loud do you wanna go? I'm not afraid of you mutherf•ckers". That was pretty much par for the course from ole Maestro. After the show I started getting real sick. Coughing all over the place, eyes watering, sinus pressure, the whole deal. I spent the rest of the evening in the van listening to the rain. Oh yeah, Indiana, it rains in Arkansas. Get your act together.


We stopped at mcdonald's to grab a cheeseburger and so Bryant could use the facilities. A tour bus full of senior citizens had that same idea at the same time. Here's tim right before he unleashed a furious string of obscenetied on these old farts for "crowding him". The two people in the foreground here ordered right before me. They ordered "one medium dr pepper".

 
Here we are hanging out at Stink Fingerz. They fed us some dank victuals for free and treated us like real gentlemen. They also had a dry erase board where you could guess the score of the Monday night football game for a chance to win $500. None of us won...

 
This is what Zac looks like while he's doing a soundcheck. It's very similar to how he looks while he's doing a "number two"


husband&wife's trip to Austin is brought to you by the number two and the color gray. And also by Dayquil. Zzzzzzz...

Day 3 : near extinction

Theres going to be a severe lack of photos for this day 3 post. There are two reasons, one: I started the day off with a dead phone/camera and two: it was really dark in the venue and none of the pictures came out. Also i guess most of the day was spent driving. So, here comes 1000 words for every picture we're missing...

Before we left St Louis we had to make an emergency trip to the shopping mall. Our fall fashions were dreadfully out of style, so ben took us to a place called urban outfitters where he works. We tried on trucker-style caps, white belts, doc martens, and v-neck Ts. We even tried on some big sunglasses and nut hugging denim jeans before we decided on one hoodie and made our way to the food court.

After all that we hit the road. Tulsa, OK is a really great town. We played at the soundpony, which was very dark, but reminded us a little bit of the bishop back home. We got free hotdogs all night and the show was a lot of fun. The best part was that there were so many excellent people hanging out there. There was no shortage of fun people to talk to who genuinely loved Tulsa. The pride was contagious and we definitely left that town convinced of it's greatness. 

We did hit one hitch, however, at the end of the night. We met a super cool dude named Mitch who offered us a place to sleep after the show. We got his address and he headed home while we hung around til the end of the night. When all was said and done we put mitch's address into the old gar baby gps system and proceeded to get very, very lost. We called him, but he was already asleep so we were sunk. Luckily, just before we left the soundpony we met a fine young lady named Vannessa who had offered to show is around the next day. After asking her advice, she offered us a place to lay our heads at her apartment. So, at 3am, we headed back across Tulsa to vannessa's place. It was super comfortable and she was so nice to us it almost made us glad to have gotten lost.

The next morning, Vannessa's roomate Erin showed up and was equally as nice and intersting to talk to. We didn't have a ton of time, but they took us downtown to get some coffee and we all got to sit and have some great conversation before we had to split again. A million thanks to Vannessa and Erin, who we can't wait to see again.


Just to illustrate the darkness of the evening, here's a picture of a great Tulsa band called No Water. Their aggro was impressive and they were some tight rockers. La Panther Happens also played last night. They were great too, and both bands were made up of super nice dudes.

 
Another thing that happened after the show last night was this. The unfortunate thing about this is that it happens every night. 


 

Day 2 : the overheads are finally off...

Day two found us in St Louis with, believe it or not, a day off. That part was a bummer, but the good thing was that it meant we got to hang and bang with a few of our old buddies from Eagle Scout. Let me tell you, Kyle ben and Jeremiah KNOW how to party. First, Kyle prepared a bunch of Mexican tacos for everyone to scarf on. Muy mas deliciouso! Then we quickly made our way into the chill zone where we watched good will hunting (my first time) and the sandlot. After that we sat up giggling and talking til we fell asleep. It was a good night.

 
After we nom'd on all those Mexican tacos and taco salads, ben was suffering from some digestive difficulties. Here's a picture I accidentally snapped of Jeremiah administering his suppository treatment. I wish they had taken care of this in a more private place, but this is life and sometimes life can be pretty raw. 


Ben is a pretty gross dude. BUT, we were having a hard time getting his nintendo xbox to play DVDs, so he poked  and prodded at it, blew into it and licked on it until it finally started cooperating. All that to say, even though he's gross, I guess he's pretty smart, too.


Here's me taking a virtual crack at winning the old oaken bucket. It was very frustrating. Turns out, IU not only sucks at football in real life, but also in the nintendo universe. On a related note, I saw Coach Cream talking on a cell phone outside of laughing planet. I think I heard him offering money to Cody Zeller, though I couldn't be sure.

 
Here's Jeremiah posing with one of his wire sculptures that he wouldn't shut up about. He made these two jazz guys, plus a saxophone, a moon, a fish, and a bunch of other crap. We bought a couple of them from him before we left, as a gesture of thanks for letting us stay there, but we tossed them in the dumpster right outside his apartment as we were leaving. That's $350 we'll never see again...


Kyle got choked up during GWH. I think he missed his mom or something. Here he is clutching a pillow and laughing on the outside, but crying on the inside. Little known fact about Kyle, he's half Mexican. At least, that's about how his tacos tasted! Zing!!


Since we had the night off, "the Amazing" Zac Canale decided to put a little work into his magic act. Its a little known fact, but Zac's been an illusionists apprentice for years now. In fact, he's been known to, right in the middle of a song, make a drumstick completely disappear. 
 

Day 1 : swearing off the hard stuff, forever

Round 2! We split from Bloomington pretty late so we could work all day and since we only had a 45 minute drive ahead of us to get to terre haute. Everything was pretty smooth sailing and we arrived to ole simrell's just in time to fall into the open arms of our buddies in black cat. The show was a hat trick of celebratory energy; husband&wife's triumphant return to the haute, some war vet's triumphant return from Iraq, and the unexpected attendance of the coors babes in footlocker-employee costumes. Here's the photographic recap...

 
The gang's all here! Here's a quick one of all the conspirators devising a plan to defeat ole simrell for the very last time. Our reward...two coors babes for every boy!! Huzzah!!!!!

  
Ole simrell is a formidable opponent and it takes a certain amount of psychological preparation to face such an intimidating force. Here's a dramatic shot of tim getting  psyched out before the big dance.

  
Black Cat is a great band. The only thing is that they insist on hanging that stupid budweiser neon light up everywhere they go. They aren't sponsored by them or anything, I think they just like the glow. Do yourself a favor and try to ignore the sign and get into the music. Close your eyes if you have to...


In celebration of our victory over ole simrell, tim and sam (of Sam and Levi, our old friends and gracious hosts) invented a very special libation...the Jack Dittle. What's a Jack Dittle, you ask? It's a shot of Jack Daniels sour mash whiskey marinated over a bed of obliterated skittles brand candy. If you're over 21, try it. If you're under 21, try replacing the JD with Mountain Dew. 

 

  
Right before I snapped this picture, tim was sitting there in the floor filling his mouth with cheese puffs and jabbering away about god-knows-what. Bryant, being the refined gentleman that he is, got pretty fed up with tim yaking with his mouthful like he was. So, he jerked that bucket of cheese poofs out of tim's hands and started cramming them in his mouth going "doi doi doi, ibelieveibelieveibelieveibelieve in rude manners...". It was a pretty tense scene for a minute, but blood is thicker than water, so everything was cool by the time we went to bed.